The Dragon Slayer

note: ahhh great. x_x fanfic ate this chapter by accident. here's a replacement, I think I re-covered everything. sorry guys, that'll teach me to back up.

content: blood, gore.

shipping: possible Hiccup x Astrid, cast your votes.

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Despair.

For a moment, Astrid struggles to feel anything but horror, knowing in her heart that she is going to die, but knowing in her head that there might just be the smallest chance to live if she gets her act together right now. Her limbs refuse to properly move. The menace of this monstrosity before them is immense. What hope do they possibly have?

Stoick charges, leading a desperate beserker charge to try and give the other fleeing vikings a chance to live, to perhaps boost morale and rally them all. It is perhaps only fitting that to such a beast, he is squashed under its foot casually like a mere bug, his guts a bloody print on the landscape.

For a moment, she wonders how they all got into this, but it isn't really a mystery.

Hiccup. He'd always been soft hearted. It was her favorite thing about him actually, she'd even found it kind of cute, not that she'd admit it out loud. It made sense that he would take pity on a dragon of all things. The boy was always so privileged, so lucky without even knowing it.

In an odd way it wasn't really surprising that the boy who had as his biggest worry not getting the girl (not that she was anyone's to get, or wanted to be gotten) and not getting the village to like him (after he destroyed half of it in yet another experiment that received a mere scolding as punishment) would run off with a friend. Honestly, she at least would have accepted him if he just stopped trying so hard to be something he was not. Heck, with his blood ties he could apprentice under any craft he wanted, had gotten to apprentice under the craft he wanted with his blacksmith work. Being a warrior might not be fully optional (although with the way Stoick told him to stay inside every single time rather than encouraging it, she suspected it in fact was), but it didn't have to be what he threw himself into, with such disastrous results every time. Even if he hadn't gotten a dragon, if he'd truly gotten sick of it here he might have been able to just take a boat and sail off elsewhere.

Astrid wasn't so lucky as Hiccup.

It wasn't just that Hiccup, unlike her, never had to worry about starving or going cold as the Chief's son, never had to worry about picking up scattered food in the cold hoping there would be a bite left for her - sorry, him - to eat or hastily rebuilding hoping the cold wouldn't give him frostbite, unable to sleep in the snow for fear of passing away in the night. It was the Viking way for the strong to take tribute from the weak, so she didn't begrudge that too deeply. Her family had been in favor once, fairly high ranking even, but death and the Flightmare had seen to destroying that. Her uncle had raised her alone and taught her to fight, but the Flightmare had destroyed him and the last shreds of her family's reputation.

Her Uncle had given her her mother's axe. The same axe that had failed to protect her mother. The same axe that would have to protect her now.

Vikings were running, giving in to the despair she herself fought so deeply against.

No, it wasn't all that which made her unlucky. It was that, unlike Hiccup, she had a crazy Chief who'd decided it was a bright idea to follow a dragon into the nest and take on this thing. Now they were all paying for it, and unlike him, she didn't have a convenient flying friend to rescue her.

Fighting her shock, she charges. "Svynfylking, you cowards! Svynfylking!" she orders, the only thing she can think of that might save them. Bizarrely, beyond all hope, some begin to rally around her. No Viking liked to be called a coward, and if they were all going to die here, it might as well be in battle fighting for glory rather than cowering. "Gather your spears and stab at its feet so it can't step on you!"

A favourite tactic of Vikings was the svynfylking, basically a wedge shaped formation designed to penetrate and disrupt an opposing formation. This comprised Axe or Swordsmen in the first rank like herself, then spearmen/halbardiers and archers. Berk didn't really have archers anymore, not after a few bad accidents in the early days had taken the best from them.

As an axeman, she was glad to risk her life on the front lines. Even if the beserker charge that usually went before these sorts of attacks had failed.

Her attack would simply have to suffice on its own.

For the first time, she actually found herself wishing she was Hiccup, before dismissing it as cowardice. Hiccup had abandoned them, and if a part of her could understand why, well, she couldn't afford to think on that now.

She would be proud to die for Berk. She just hoped it didn't come to that, hoped that their shields could survive even a single one of the terrible beast's blasts.

"CHARGE!"

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end notes: originally inspired by all those Hiccup runs away fics, and Drago having a dragon army: meaning Hiccup isn't the only one who can deal with dragons, so why in every single fic does no one else ever have a moment to shine? Maybe Hiccup would be happier not being a Viking, honestly. People aren't all obligated to be friends with one another. And if Hiccup is happy elsewhere, someone else would have to deal with the horrible potential aftermath.

Your vote on if Hiccup comes back / romances / reconciles.